The present invention relates to a display apparatus suitable for applying to a television receiver by which various video programs can be viewed.
Conventionally, when viewing content of television broadcasts or the like, a tuner is incorporated in a television receiver so that data received by the tuner can be displayed by the receiver. Accordingly, it is necessary to connect an antenna line to the television receiver and there is a restriction on portability and the like of the receiver.
In order to solve this problem, the applicant of the present invention has previously developed a display apparatus that has a configuration in which a base apparatus incorporating a reception means such as the tuner and a monitor apparatus in which video or the like is displayed are provided separately. The display apparatus including such base apparatus and monitor apparatus is described in Japanese Published Patent Application No. 2002-33714.
In the case of the display apparatus having this configuration, IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 802.11 standard method which is the standard of wireless LAN (Local Area Network) is, for example, employed to perform wireless communication between the base apparatus and the monitor apparatus. Therefore, there is no need to connect a video signal source such as the antenna line or a video reproducing apparatus to the monitor apparatus, and the monitor apparatus can be freely carried within a range where communication with the base apparatus is possible. Moreover, if there is a function to connect to the Internet on the side of the base apparatus, content such as video or audio, which are downloaded via the Internet, can be viewed on the monitor apparatus which can be carried freely. Furthermore, it is also possible to transmit and receive e-mail and to display the mail which is transmitted or received.
Meanwhile, when the display apparatus has many functions, including viewing television broadcasts, viewing a video program input into an external input terminal, viewing content downloaded via the Internet and the display of e-mail as described above, a certain device for obtaining operability or the like is required so that the respective functions can be operated easily. For example, in order to change a channel of the tuner or change an input on the monitor apparatus side, it is necessary to provide a large number of operating buttons in the monitor apparatus to perform those operations.
However, when providing a large number of operating buttons in the monitor apparatus, there needs to be much more space to provide those operating buttons on the monitor apparatus and the monitor apparatus becomes unavoidably large. Therefore, it is not preferable to provide too many buttons when considering the design of the monitor apparatus, and furthermore if simply a large number of buttons are provided, a user needs much time and effort to search for a necessary button, resulting in a problem that the operability thereof becomes unfavorable.
Further, it is also possible not to provide the operating buttons directly in the monitor apparatus, but to provide a remote control apparatus used with the monitor apparatus as a set, the remote control apparatus having a large number of operating buttons. However, even in that case the user needs much time and effort to search for a button indicating a required function if those large number of operating buttons are simply provided on the remote control apparatus, resulting in deficient operability.
In the display apparatus described in Japanese Published Patent Application No. 2002-33714, the display screen of the monitor apparatus is formed of a touch panel and when it is brought into a mode capable of operating, the operating buttons which are displayed as operation guidance are shown on the display screen, so that when the user touches the desired button on the touch panel, the corresponding operation is performed; and therefore there is no need to provide physical operating buttons in large numbers on the apparatus. However, even in such case, the operability is not improved simply by displaying a large number of buttons corresponding to the respective functions as the button display on the display screen of the touch panel.
Moreover, when the display screen is formed as a touch panel and is used as a screen for operation, there is a problem that while the operation screen is being displayed, it is not possible to view a video of the main object. In order to solve this problem, it has been proposed to display the main video in the display screen by reducing the display size thereof while the operation screen is being displayed. However, when the size of the main video is reduced uniformly for display while the operation screen is being displayed, there may be the case in which the display cannot be shown favorably, which is not preferable.
In addition, although the problem has been explained referring to the case where the display apparatus includes the base apparatus and the monitor apparatus separately provided as an example, there exists a similar problem even in the case of the display apparatus in which a tuner and display means or the like are integrated as one unit.
The present invention is made in view of such problems and aims at improving the operability of the display apparatus of this kind.